Race and public policy in Brazil: Immigration, Sao Paulo and the First Republic

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Race and public policy in Brazil: Immigration, Sao Paulo and the First Republic

Penn, David Scott, M.A.

The University of Arizona, 1991

U MI 300 N. Zeeb Rd. Ann Aibor, MI 48106

RACE AND PUBLIC POLICY IN BRAZIL: IMMIGRATION, SAO PAULO AND THE FIRST REPUBLIC

by David Scott Penn

A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of the COMMITTEE ON LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES (GRADUATE) In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of MASTER OF ARTS In the Graduate College THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA

19 9 1 2

STATEMENT BY AUTHOR This thesis has been submitted in partial fulfullment of requirements for an advanced degree at The University of Arizona and is deposited in the University Library to be made available to borrowers under rules of the Library. Brief quotations from this thesis are allowable without special permission, provided that accurate acknowledgment of source is made. Requests for permission for extended quotations from or reproduction of this manuscript in whole or in part may be granted by the head of the major department or the Dean of the Graduate College when in his or her judgement the proposed use of the material is in the interests of scholarship. In all other instances, however, permission must be obtained from the author.

APPROVAL BY THESIS DIRECTOR This thesis has been aoDroved on the date shown below:

/ mi Kathleen Schfrartzi Date 3

Table of Contents LIST OF TABLES 5 ABSTRACT 6 CHAPTER ONE: PROBLEM, LITERATURE REVIEW, SOCIAL CONFLICT MODEL 7 1.1 Theories of Brazilian Race Relations 8 1.2 Towards a Model of Social Conflict 15 1.3 Chapter Summary 19 CHAPTER TWO: APPLICATIONS, STUDY SAMPLE, RESEARCH DESIGN 21 2.1 Comparative Applications 21 2.2 Study Sample 28 2.3 Data Sources and Strategy 31 CHAPTER THREE: DEFINITION OF COMPETING GROUPS 36 3.1 Ethnic Definition of Competing Groups 36 3.2 Labor in the Rural Sector 40 3.3 Labor in the Urban Sector 45 3.4 Chapter Summary 50 CHAPTER FOUR: PRICE OF LABOR 52 4.1 Information: Afro-Brazilians 52 4.2 Information: Italian Immigrants 55 4.3 Level of Living: Italian Immigrants 57 4.4 Permanency: Italian Immigrants 59 4.5 Chapter Summary 62 4 CHAPTER FIVE: POLITICAL CAPACITY OF LABOR 65 5.1 Overview: Sao Paulo's Political Society 65 5.2 Organization of Competing Groups 72 5.3 Ties to Foreign/Domestic Elites 79 5.4 Accessibility of Political Society 80 5.5 Chapter Summary 82 CHAPTER SIX: ANALYSIS AND CONCLUSIONS 84 6.1 Labor Conflict and Political Opportunity 84 6.2 Role of the Capitalist/Agricultural Elite 87 6.3 Uniqueness of Sao Paulo Case 89 6.4 Conclusions 90 REFERENCES 93 5

List of Tables

1. Split Labor Comparisons: United States, South Africa and Brazil 27 2. Split Labor Comparisons for Sao Paulo, Brazil During the First Republic 33 3. Immigration Trends in the State of Sao Paulo 36 4. Growth of the Population of the City of Sao Paulo, 1886 and 1893 45 5. Definition of Competing Labor Groups in Sao Paulo During the First Republic 51 6. Ethnicity and the Price of Labor in Sao Paulo During the First Republic 63 7. Comparative Political Capacity of Afro- Brazilians and Italians in Sao Paulo During the First Republic 82 8. Graph of the Price of Labor for Afro- Brazilians and Italians in Sao Paulo During the First Republic 85 6 ABSTRACT

This paper investigates the absence of racial public policy in Brazil during the First Republic. Using secondary sources, this paper looks at economic competition and conflict between black and immigrant labor in the state of Sao Paulo and tests the applicability of the split labor market theory of ethnic antagonism—a theory used in explaining the development of ethnic conflict into racial public policy. Such conflict has been a primary factor in the development of racial public policies such as those found in the United States and South Africa. The political organization of black Brazilians and immigrant (primarily Italian) groups is also analyzed to discover whether or not these groups would have been capable of translating their economic goals into race-based public policy. The thesis suggests that there was little competition in many areas, and that even where there was competition, neither group had sufficient political capacity to successfully push for exclusionary public policies based on race. 7 Chapter One: Problem, Literature Review, Social Conflict Model Scholars of comparative race relations have often been confounded in their attempts to understand the presence or absence of racism in countries that have not exhibited racial public policies. In many ways, Brazil is such a country. Even with its history of West African slavery and the second largest population in the world of citizens of African descent, Brazil does not appear to exhibit institutionally-sanctioned social segregation nor political exclusion of its black population. Nowhere in Brazilian post-emancipation history is there evidence of the de jure segregation that has marked racial policy in nations such as the United States and South Africa. Nowhere in Brazilian post-emancipation history is there evidence of institutionally-sanctioned color bars on employment, voting or housing. Additionally, vigilante white supremacist organizations and/or activity such as the American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, lynchings or pogrom-style "race riots" also have been non­ existent in the history of Brazilian race relations. In this chapter, I will introduce some of the major theories of Brazilian race relations and discuss their ability to explain the lack of racial public policies there. At the end of the chapter, I will propose an alternative theory that will provide a systematic and analytic framework through which this question may be answered. 8 l.l Thaori.es of BraBilian Raca Relations The apparent lack of racism as public policy in Brazil has caused some theorists to conclude that racism does not exist in post-emancipation Brazil. This school of thought, known as the "optimist school"1, suggests that a "racial democracy" exists within Brazil. The guiding philosophy of this view includes an "absence of racial prejudice and discrimination which in turn impl[ies] the existence of equal economic and social opportunities" for all Brazilians, black and white.2 Gilberto Freyre, the leading proponent of the "optimist school" of the mid-twentieth century, suggests that the "Luso-Brazilian culture's customs of racial tolerance" and the constant process of racial miscegenation has helped prevent widespread animosity between blacks and whites in Brazil.3 In this theory, public policies of racism do not exist because racism does not exist. This view of their own racial situation remains highly popular among many black and white Brazilians from a variety of socio­ economic backgrounds. While most of the tenets of this school of

'Fontaine, Pierre-Michel. "Research in the Political Economy of Afro-Latin America," Latin American Research Reviaw 15:2 (1980): 111-141. 2Hasenbalg, Carlos A. Raca Relations in Modern Brazil. (Albuquerque: Latin American Institute of the University of New Mexico, 1981), p. 8.

3Corwin, Arthur F. "Afro-Brazilians: Myths and Realities," Slavery and Race Relations in Latin America. ed. Robert Brent Toplin. (Westport, CN: Greenwood Press, 1974), 385-437. thought have been rejected, some of its basic premises and observations have been incorporated by subsequent theorists. Scholars of what is often referred to as the Nordeste school (those theorists whose research is based on the northeastern part of Brazil, a region noteable for its black/mulatto majority and its economic underdevelopment) are among those who first challenged the optimist school's interpretation of Brazilian race relations. These scholars maintain that what prejudice exists in Brazil is based largely on class standing rather than race or color. Referring to race-based discrimination as a "chimerical side-effect of the class structure", Marvin Harris, a premier member of the Nordeste school, suggests that It is one's class and not one's race which determines the adoption of subordinate and superordinate attitudes between specific individuals in face-to-face relations . . . There are no racial groups against which discrimination occurs. Instead, there are class groups. Color is one of the criteria of class identity; but it is not the only criterion.4 Harris speaks to the issue of institutional race discrimination as well. His point, simply put, is that because there was little opportunity for upward mobility in the perpetually stagnant, post-emancipation economy of the northeast, "no one had anything

to gain ... by instituting a rigid rule of racial descent5.

4Marvin Harris, "Race and Class in Minas Velhas, Brazil: Race and Class in Brazil, ed. Charles Wagley. (Paris: UNESCO, 1952). And Harris, Patterns of Race in the Americas. (New York: Walker and Company, 1964), p. 61. sHarris, Patterns of Race in the Americas, p. 96. 10 Harris continues to note that the sharp division between the Portuguese business elite and the Afro-Brazilians was such that no competition between the groups ever existed over which racial exclusion or caste policies would have developed.6 For Harris, the absence of public policies of racism is related to the idea of mobility. Insofar as there was little room for economic or social vertical mobility in the northeast, public policies attempting to "guarantee" mobility for a certain ethnic group would have been pointless. It was not until the evolution of the Sao Paulo school, led by sociologists and political scientists such as Florestan Fernandes, Roger Bastide, Octavio Ianni and Fernando Henrique Cardoso that a more complete picture of Brazilian race relations was attempted. Although principally basing their research in Sao Paulo and other southern states, the conclusions of the Sao Paulo school were important both in revealing the racial prejudice that exists in Brazil and in shifting the emphasis away from class to color. Fernandes went as far as to suggest that: . . . since the advent of Abolition neither color prejudice nor racial discrimination was intended to institute economic and social privileges for the benefit of the white race. Their function was to defend the barriers that structurally and dynamically protected the established privileges and the very position of the white as the dominant race (1969: 134).

6Edna Bonacich. "A Theory of Ethnic Antagonism: The Split Labor Market," American Sociological Review 37 (October 1972), p. 552. 11 Much of Fernandes1 critique of Brazilian race relations is developed alongside his critique of Brazilian capitalism. Insofar as he attributes the abolition of slavery in Brazil to the demands and conditions of capitalist economic relationships, Fernandes claims that post-emancipation race relations were shaped largely by the legacy of slavery on the Afro-Brazilian population.7 This legacy prevented blacks from developing responsible attitudes toward self and family, a capitalist work ethic, a sense of entrepreneurship and other qualities that would enable them to compete in the wage labor market that developed in the late 19th century. This "anti-capitalist ethos, coupled with patterns of deference to whites and stereotypes of black laziness and lack of trustworthiness was enough, says Fernandes, to exclude blacks from gainful employment following Abolition and, further, kept them at the very bottom of the socio-economic ladder.8 Thus, if the goal of color prejudice—per Fernandes—is to insure those barriers that maintain white supremacy, then the early "locating" of blacks as a marginalized underclass explains why no racial public policies existed following emancipation in Brazil. White supremacy was already established. Fernandes*

7Florestan Fernandes. The Negro in Brazilian Society. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1969). See also Fernandes, "Beyond Poverty: The Negro and the Mulatto in Brazil," Slavery and Race Relations in Latin America. ed. Robert Brent Topiin. (Westport, CN: Greenwood Press, 1974), pp. 277-298.

8Florestan Fernandes, "Immigration and Race Relations in Sao Paulo," Race and Class in Latin America, ed. Magnus Morner. (New York, 1970), p. 126. 12 theory suggests that only in the face of black social and economic advances would racial public policies become necessary to insure white supremacy. The most significant theorists of Brazilian race relations since the Sao Paulo school have departed from explanations based on the legacy of slavery to investigate the way racial ideologies shape the participation of blacks and mulattoes in Brazilian society. While Fernandes hoped that racism, as an ideological and structural hold-over from the days of slavery, would dissipate in the face of a modernizing capitalist society and an environment of increasingly competitive socio-economic relations, later commentators such as Carlos Hasenbalg disagree. Hasenbalg asserts that racism will continue to exist as long as it is submerged in class-based, economic considerations.9 Such considerations contribute to "black political isolation",10 a phenomenon that some see as responsible for the lack of racial consciousness among Afro-Brazilians. This "isolation" is also brought about, in Hasenbalg's estimation, by a lack of the sort of conflict or competition in the economic sphere which often serves to unify groups—however adversarily. It is the combination of these two aspects of Brazilian race relations with a third—the philosophy of "whitening," that Hasenbalg sees as responsible for the "acquiescence" of blacks to a socio-economic

'Fontaine, "Research in the Political Economy of Afro-Latin America," p. 129.

10Hasenbalg, Race Relations in Modern Brazil, 10. 13 order that locates them at the low end of the scale. For Hasenbalg, it is the combination of a lack of competition between blacks and whites that has prevented the need for racial public policies of exclusion or caste. The potential gains of competition between ethnic groups is further complicated by the lack of solidarity among the black Brazilian population, thus atomizing any rewards coming from confronting prejudice and discrimination in Brazilian socio-economic life. The concept of "whitening" is a major component in the race theory of American sociologist Carl Degler. The "Degler" thesis, as it is known, suggests that the pattern of colonization undertaken by the Portuguese during the 15th century explains the "softer" racial climate that separates Brazil from nations such as the United States and South Africa. In short, this pattern of colonization was such as to tolerate sexual union and to legitimize marriage between members of different races—in this instance, between single Portuguese soldiers and West African slaves. The acceptance of the half-black, half-white "mulatto" offspring in Brazilian society and, importantly, the social positioning of this mulatto group between blacks and whites became an avenue—or, as Degler refers to it, an "escape hatch"— through which blacks (or at least their children) could escape the negative social sanctions of their darker skin color.11 It is this corollary that, in the early and mid-twentieth century,

11Carl N. Degler. Neither Black Nor White. (New York: MacMillan Company, 1971), p. 219. formed the functional backbone of the "racial democracy" thesis— the notion of "whitening" that will both socially and biologically transform poor blacks into lower middle class (one must assume) mulattoes. Much can be attributed to the phenomenon of the "mulatto escape hatch" according to Degler—including the evasive character of Brazilian attitudes toward ethnicity. While admitting that this blurring of the color line has been in some ways beneficial to the black and mulatto population of Brazil, Degler does attribute a lack of black unity and race-based organization to mulattoes who have slipped through the hatch.12 Additionally, the lack of institutional sanctions against blacks, in Degler's reading, is because of the presence of a dynamic racial continuum as opposed to static racial categories. Unlike the United States, where an emphasis on race by bloodline made strict racial delineations possible, in Brazil, the question of how black is black remains a very real one. In a nation in which blacks and mulattoes have historically referred to themselves as being lighter in color than they may actually be, the philosophy of "whitening" is clearly a potent aspect of black/white relations in Brazil.13 For author Abdias do Nascimento, the phenomenon of "whitening" is genocide—plain and simple. In his reading of Brazilian race relations, there

1zDegler, Neither Black Nor White, pp. 174-185.

13Hasenbalg, Race Relations in Modern Brasil, p. 6. 15 was nothing beneficial for blacks in the societal sanction of miscegenation insofar as it constitutes a "highly articulated strategy of liquidating the huge Black majority of newly emancipated slaves ... in the decades after Abolition".14 Nascimento's conclusions and observations on the state philosophy of "whitening" are similar to those of Hasenbalg: the dissolution of racial identity and the continued social and economic disenfranchisement of blacks who remain "black" in Brazil. Thus, Nascimento sees an absence of competition in economic, but also socio-cultural, spheres as precluding both racial conflict and public policies of racism in Brazil.

1.2 Towards a Model of Social Conflict The issue of competition appears to be central in understanding the lack of racial public policy in Brazil—as do issues of ethnic identification and socio-political power. To this end, the model used in this investigation will help us to see what constitutes economic competition in a given society, how that competition can be ethnically defined and how the political capacity of one group can enable them to establish exclusionary public policies to defend their own in-group interests versus both capital and competing labor.

uElisa Larkin Nascimento. "Aspects of Afro-Brazilian Experience," Journal of Black Studies 11:2 (December 1980): 195- 216. 16 Bonacich and the split labor-narkat modal The split labor-market theory of ethnic antagonism is one systematic method of understanding the development of racial public policies. A split labor market exists when two labor groups are paid differing wages for the same work—or would be paid differently if their work were identical.15 When these two labor groups are present and competing in the same sector, antagonism often develops between the higher and lower-priced workforces. This antagonism takes on racial connotations when the higher and lower priced workforces differ ethnically from each other. By "antagonism" is meant any racially-based intergroup conflict ranging from prejudices and stereotypes to segregation and mass violence.16 A major assumption of the split labor-market theory of ethnic antagonism is the liberal or laissez-faire attitude of business elites. Although many have suggested that business elites pay "darker skinned or culturally different persons" less on the basis on prejudice, the split labor market theory asserts that businesses will always try to pay as little for labor as is possible (regardless of ethnicity) and will only differ from this preference under duress.17 Such duress may be the strategic and organizational strength of a particular labor group, or an

1sBonacich, "A Theory of Ethnic Antagonism: The Split Labor Market," p. 549.

16Ibid. p. 549.

17Ibid. p. 553. 17 alliance between a labor group and a major political organization. Ethnic differences do not in and of themselves necessitate a difference in the price of labor, but certain historical exigencies (such as slavery or a peasant culture in direct contact with an industrializing one) often create varying standards of living that "permit" lower wages being offered to newcomers to an area's capitalist, wage marketplace. In areas where a high degree of ethnic antagonism is present (such as the United States and South Africa) split labor-market victories for higher priced labor have generally resulted in one

of two outcomes: exclusion or caste.18 Both represent victories over business elites by higher-priced labor by either denying them access to the lower-priced workforce (in the case of exclusion) or (in the instance of caste) by forcing them to submit to a "labor aristocracy" in which better-paying, more skilled jobs are reserved for members of the higher-priced group while lower-priced groups are left with marginal, unskilled jobs

with little permanancy or vertical mobility. Exclusion systems usually develop when the lower-priced labor group exists outside of the area of the higher-priced group and enters that area for the purpose of securing work—frequently at the invitation of business elites.19 Caste systems are more likely, on the contrary, when the lower-priced labor group

18Ibid. p. 557. "ibid. p. 554-555. 18 already exists within the same area as the higher-priced groups, is already a part of the labor market and is virtually impossible to exclude. In this instance, higher-priced labor will attempt to prevent being undercut by cheaper labor by barring them from the less labor-intensive, better paying jobs with opportunities for vertical mobility.

Split Labor Criterion The criterion for a split labor-market are essentially two­ fold and may be considered as the 1) economic bases for competition and 2) political capacity for conflict. The economic bases for competition concern primarily the price of labor. By way of equation, the price of labor may be "computed" as follows: Price of labors level of living + information + political resources + permanancy of worker Although each of the above factors in the price of labor will be explained in subsequent chapters, what should be kept in mind at the onset is that price of labor is not based solely—or at times even primarily—on the wages paid to laborers. Bonacich notes: The concept of "price of labor" refers to labor's total cost to the employers, including not only wages, but the cost of recruitment, transportation, room and board, education, health care (if the employer must bear these), and the costs of labor unrest. The second major consideration in this model is the political capacity for conflict. Although "political resources"

20Ibid. p. 549. 19 are included in Bonacich's price of labor formulation, the political capacity for conflict is used to assess how a particular labor group—after being constituted as higher or lower-priced—may be able to take advantage of its political power to secure economic/employment advantages versus employers and other competing labor groups. There are three types of political capacity that are relevant here: in-group organizational strength, ties to foreign or domestic elites, and the overall accessibility of political society. Such political capacity is downplayed in Bonacich's orginal model but, as our reading of the United States and South African cases will reveal, such political capacity is vital if racial conflict borne of economic conflict is to be institutionalized through racial public policies. Additionally, it is the hypothesis of this investigation that the absence of such political capacity is a key element in the Brazilian case and helps to separate it from the racial outcomes of the U.S. and South Africa. l.3 Chapter Summary In this chapter I have introduced theories of race relations that have been used to assess the racial climate of Brazil as seen from a variety of commentators. This introduction suggests an apparent contradiction: even though the vast majority of observers claim that racism exists in Brazil, all admit that a lack of conflict between blacks and whites has prevailed and continues to be the norm. In response to this, I have introduced 20 a theory of social conflict—Bonacich's split labor-market theory of ethnic antagonism—as a tool in explaining why racial conflict (and, by extension, racial public policy) has not occurred in Brazil. While this theory does not necessarily invalidate other explanations as to the absence of racial public policy in Brazil, it does provide for a more systematic analysis of the dynamics of socio-economic groups in the workplace and society. This, as the comparative applications in the next chapter will show, makes the split labor-market theory indispensible in understanding the relationship between social groups, ethnic competition and racial policy. 21 Chapter Two: Applications, Study Sample, Research Design The role of social conflict in the development of racial public policies cannot be understated. In this chapter, I will show the applicability of the split labor-market theory of ethnic antagonism to the development of racial public policies in the United States and South Africa. This comparative framework will do two things: 1) show the dynamics between employers and higher and lower-priced labor as economic competition is turned into racial public policy, and 2) provide the basis for similarities to and differences from the Brazilian case. Second, this chapter will explain why Sao Paulo and the First Republic are the best place and period to explore racial public policy in Brazil. Finally, the data sources used in this investigation and the research strategy will be explained and diagrammed.

2.1 Comparative Applications The Black Codes: United States Often veiled as an attempt to "define the freedmen's new rights and responsibities" in the wake of slavery, the American Black Codes were an attempt by white planters and landowners to maintain—within the limitations of a wage-labor system—the same sort of patron-client labor relationship between blacks and landowning whites• that existed• during• slavery.20 State

Z0Eric Foner. A Short History of Reconstruction, 1863-1877. (New York: Harper and Row, Inc., 1990), 93. See also, George M. Frederickson's White Supremacy: A Comparative Study in American and South African History. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981), 181; and William Julius Wilson's The Declining Significance of 22 legislatures throughout the south—beginning with Mississipi and South Carolina in 1865—enacted laws that required blacks to keep written evidence of employment, forbid them from renting land in urban areas and prevented them from becoming apprentices in a variety of skilled and semi-skilled trades. Additionally, in states like Louisiana, white planters were given power to settle labor disputes. Even when the race-based laws were overruled at the urging of northern states and the federal government, many of the tax policies and other regressive economic sanctions continued to limit black (and, to a lesser degree, poor white) economic franchisement while eliminating their role as members of the political society that ruled the post-Civil War south.21

Jim Crow Segregation: United States The Black Codes disappeared with the advent of Congressional, or Radical, Reconstruction—the plan to put southern politics and economics in line with northern attitudes toward human rights and "free" labor. However, a threat remained in the form of poor whites who resented the political and economic gains of blacks in this period. As Wilson writes: The emergence of initial Jim Crow segregation laws directly parallels the rise of lower- class whites to political power in the labor reform movement. Racial inequality therefore reflected the class interests of white workers and was designed to eliminate black

Race. 2nd ed. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1980), 59. 21Foner, A Short History of Reconstruction/ 1863-1877, 97. 23

encroachment in a context of competitive race relations.22 The political franchisement of poor whites that took place as Congressional Reconstruction waned created an opportunity through which lower-class whites could establish themselves as central agents in the southern labor force. This was particularly strong in the mining towns and around the textile industries that began to develop throughout the South as industrialization increased in the late nineteenth century. Although the first Jim Crow legislation was passed in 1881—a Tennessee law mandating that separate facilities must be provided for blacks and whites on the railroads—it was not until the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court decision validating "separate but equal" public accomodations that Jim Crow laws began the sort of overnight proliferation that soon came to characterize the American

South.23

Color Bars and Apartheid: South Africa The rising employment of black Africans in the increasingly lucrative mining industry of South Africa at the beginning of the

22Wilson, The Declining Significance of Race, 2nd ed., 59.

23Ibid. p. 135. Although de facto segregation had existed as early as 1865 in most regions in the South, historian C. Vann Woodward notes that "[i]n the early years of freedom saloons in Mississippi usually served both whites and blacks at the same bar; many public eating places, *using separate tables, served both races in the same room'; public parks and buildings were still open to both to a great extent; and segregation in common carriers was not at all strict." Origins of the New South, 1877-1913. 2nd ed. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1971), p. 210. 24 twentieth century allowed them to make economic "advances" over their similarly semi-skilled white African counterparts.24 This situation was exacerbated by South African capitalists who preferred black Africans workers because of the overall lower price of their labor. These industrialists enforced this preference by lobbying for—and getting—legislation that kept black African wages and bargaining power low. The combination of the business elite's exploitation of black labor and the denial of opportunities for poor whites (referred to bluntly in a 1906 Transvaal commission report as the "Poor White Problem") set up what Frederickson has called: ...a virtually unavoidable conflict between a disenfranchised, semi-servile, and ultra-cheap class of workers and another segment of the labor force that had the capacity to organize and exert political influence.25 The political backlash resulting from the harsh repression of a 1922 violent white workers' strike—a conflict resulting in hundreds of dead and wounded—took place two years later with elections that swept into power a coalition of Afrikaaners (white

South Africans) and the South African Labor Party.26 The results of these elections reveal the deep-seated resentment among the

24Frederickson, Whit* Supremacy, p. 228-229. Also, Sheila T. L. Van der Horst. "The Effects of Industrialisation on Race Relations in South Africa," Industrialisation and Race Relations: A Symposium, ed. Guy Hunter. (London: Oxford University Press, 1965), 97-140.

25Frederickson, White Supremacy, p. 233.

26Ibid. p. 232. 25 South African population for the previous administrations heavy- handed crackdown on the labor uprising and the general

"insensitivity1* to white labor's demands for protection against black African labor.27 Between 1922 and 1925, a series of acts blocked black Africans from becoming artisans and semi-skilled craftspersons in occupations such as engineering and printing.28 (Van der Horst 1965: 119). Finally, in 1926, the mining color bar was re-enacted—effectively restoring South African whites to their semi-skilled positions and returning black Africans to their status as unskilled laborers. The enactment of the 1926 Industrial Color Bar set the stage for a labor aristocracy in which whites were to be guaranteed jobs at artificially high wages.29 ••Formal" apartheid, which developed 20 years later, was both a continuation of this labor- based caste system and a response to the rural-to-urban migration of black Africans immediately following World War II. This migration of blacks seeking employment in the expanding urban industrial sector re-ignited white fears of job competition and contributed to the 1948 electoral victory of a Nationalist party

27Ibid. p. 233.

28Van der Horst, "The Effects of Industrialisation on Race Relations in South Africa," p. 119. ^Frederickson, Whit* Supremacy, p. 233. 26 that campaigned on the platform of racial segregation known as apartheid.30 Both of the enduring forms of institutional racism in the United States and South Africa—Jim Crow and apartheid, respectively—were the result of political victories by higher- priced white labor groups over the resistance of business groups. These groups—planters and early industrialists in the American south and industrial capitalists in South Africa—had developed labor situations which permitted them to exploit lower-priced black labor through regulations such as those found in the Black Codes of the American South. The ethnic differences between the higher-priced and lower-priced labor groups transformed labor conflict into racial conflict. Through the realization of their political power, higher-priced labor groups were able to defend their particular interests through the types of exclusion and/or caste policies they promoted and eventually implemented through their political representatives. In the United States, where black labor was already a long­ standing and vital component of the southern economy, the option for caste—of segregating black society into inferior living, working and educational conditions—was the best way working class whites could limit economic and socio-political competition between themselves and blacks. The South African case is largely a combination of exclusion and caste. Because black Africans had

30Van der Horst, "The Effects of Industrialisation on Race Relations in South Africa," p. 135. 27 existed as a migratory workforce in early South African industry, there was a significant amount of exclusion from economic and political participation in white South African society.31 However, as a source of unskilled labor, black Africans were permitted to enter a labor caste system in which more skilled, better-paying jobs with greater opportunities for vertical mobility were reserved for whites. A template for comparing social conflict in the United States, South Africa and Brazil—using Bonacich's split labor theory—is provided below:

Table 1. Split Labor Comparisons: United States/ South Africa and Brazil U.S. South Africa Brazil competing groups yes yes ? ethnically defined groups in same yes yes ? labor sector price of labor --difference in no yes ? permanancy —difference in no no ? information —difference in slight yes ? living level —difference in yes yes ? political resources political capacity

31Van der Horst, "The Effects of Industrialisation on Race Relations in South Africa," p. 111. 28

—organ!>ational moderate/ high/ level of groups low low white/black —strength of elite high/ moderate/ ties low low white/black ~accesibility of moderate moderate political society

2.2 Study Sample Importance of Sao Paulo and the First Republic The First Republic (1889-1930) marked a wide variety of political and economic changes for both the Brazilian republic in general and the state of Sao Paulo specifically. Initially a loose federation, the Brazilian states enjoyed a great amount of autonomy. This autonomy was a boon for Sao Paulo which, as one of the more prosperous states, was able to undertake ventures such as subsidized immigration to greatly reduce labor costs for its most valuable and profitable sector—the coffee fazendas of the interior. This policy, the only one in Brazil, was a major factor in establishing labor groups and race relations in Sao Paulo. Further, this policy differentiates the history of Paulista ethnic relations from those of neighboring states. The end of imperial authority also meant the rise of an oligarchical system of political rule and the domination of the federal government by a few prosperous, economically dominant states such

as Minas Gerais, Rio Grande do Sul and Sao Paulo.32

32Thomas E. Skidmore and Peter H. Smith. Modern Latin America. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), p. 156. 29 Sao Paulo was the only region where potentially competitive wage groups were present during the initial phase of urbanization and industrialization. This coincides with the first Brazilian federal republic, 1889-1930. Although the 1930s and 40s—with the major industrialization programme of Getulio Vargas—might also be an appropriate period in which to look for competition between labor groups, what is of interest here is how labor groups are initially constituted—both in terms of ethnicity as well as price of labor. Although both are fluid characteristics,33 the initial formation of intralabor and labor- capital relationships often limit the possibility of change in strength and competitive advantage vis-a-vis one another. This is especially true in Brazil where accessibility to political and economic power has historically been limited by several factors: under- or uneven economic development, a military committed to "internal security", and an anti-labor posture taken by the

Brazilian federal government.34 Additionally, as the comparative discussion reveals, Jim Crow and apartheid came about as wage- labor groups were trying to position themselves against the interests of competing labor and capital. In specific, both

33The price of labor obviously changes as the relationship between capital and labor changes, as well as any given economic climate capital and labor are located in. The ethnic identification of a group can change as the result of assimilation or separation, as well as through the reduced or increased immigration of different or same ethnic groups members. ^Bradford E. Burns. A History of Brazil. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970), p. 302. 30 forms of racial public policy were reactions against the attempts by capital to constitute a particular labor relationship with lower-priced labor that would have excluded higher-priced groups by default.

Importance of four "•ouents" (1885, 1900, 1915, 1930) There are four "moments" during the First Republic that are especially important in the evolution of post-emancipation race relations in Sao Paulo. These "moments" mark important shifts or "establishing points" in the price of labor and/or political capacity for the two major labor groups—Afro-Brazilians and Italian immigrants—under discussion here. The years selected are used more to indicate a general socio-economic and political climate than to indicate specific changes taking place at specific times. For example, 1885 is used to refer to the era of emancipation for black slaves and their introduction to wage labor in the rural sector. This year also refers to the first major arrivals of subsidized European immigrants (largely Italian) who were brought in to saturate the rural labor market in the wake of Abolition. The second "moment", 1900, marks the consolidation of the immigrant workforce in both the rural and urban sectors and the rise of immigrant organized labor. Third, 1915, characterizes the consolidation of immigrant unions, the rise of anti-immigrant sentiment, and the reconsideration of native labor over foreign-born workers. Finally, 1930 is used to indicate the rehabilitation and rejuvenation of the Brazilian 31 worker in the eyes of Paulista capitalists and the beginning of the second major stride in industrialization that opened up employment opportunities for previously marginalized groups such as Afro- and native Brazilians.

2.3 Data Sources And strategy Secondary Sources, Government Statistics Government statistics available through the publications of agencies such as the Departmento Nacional de Estatistica and the Diretoria Geral de Estatistica (DGE)'s Anuario estatistico provide the only primary sources available for this discussion. These statistics are most helpful in discussions of overall state and municipal populations, immigration numbers and government spending at both the state and federal levels. Government statistics are less helpful in determining racial populations however. The reason for this is two-fold. For one, the Brazilian government has at varying times not included racial information in its census collection. This has been interpreted both as an attempt to mask the numbers of Brazilians of color as well as to contribute to the state philosophy of a racial democracy in which racial categories are irrelevant. Secondly, as has been suggested earlier, blacks in Brazil are notorious for referring to themselves as lighter in color than they are. Although it is difficult, if not impossible, to determine how many blacks and mulattoes are refering to themselves as mulattoes and whites, respectively, it is obvious that this phenomenon has 32 resulted in a persistent underestimation of the black and mulatto population throughout Brazil. Thus, much of the data used in this discussion is drawn also from secondary sources. While many studies have been done on racial stereotypes and attitudes in Brazil, the best sources for information on labor issues is available almost exclusively through old Sao Paulo periodicals and union newspapers such as Avanti!, o Amigo do Povo and El Grito del Pueblo. Today, the vast majority of these sources are available only through archives in Sao Paulo—or through secondary sources such as journal articles and monographs. Contemporary historians such as George Reid Andrews and immigration/migration scholar Thomas Holloway have made extensive use of periodicals of the era and it is their work that has raised new questions about the relationship between blacks and immigrant whites in Sao Paulo's rural and urban sectors during the First Republic.35 Their research and secondary citations form an important foundation for this investigation into race, public policy and Sao Paulo, Brazil.

Strategy

35Foremost among these revisionists are George Reid Andrews and Thomas Holloway. Andrews' most recent work in this area is "Black and White Workers: Sao Paulo, Brazil, 1888-1928," Hispanic American Historical Review 68:3 (August 1988): 491-524. Holloway's primary work is Immigrants on the Land: Coffee and Society in Sao Paulo, 1886-1934 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980). 33 The variables, defining the split labor-market model, used in this analysis are located on the chart below. This chart divides the First Republic into the "four" moments described above. Rather than attempting to make one singular analysis of the changes in price of labor and political capacity, this disaggregation allows for a clearer understanding of the shifts in price of labor and political capacity between labor groups in Sao Paulo. Table 2. Split Labor comparisons for Sao Paulo, Brazil During First Republic 1889-1930 1885 1900 1915 1930 Ethnicity and the Price of Labor competing groups ethnically defined labor groups in same sector --rural

—urban price of labor —permanancy Italian —permanancy Afro-Brazilian —information Italian —information Afro-Brazilian —level of living Italian —level of living Afro-Brazilian 34

Political Capacity —-organ!sation Italian —organisation Afro-Brazilian —strength of •lit* ties Italian —strength of •lite ties Afro-Brazilian —accesibility of political society By following the above design, the two major conditions in the development of racial public policies, price of labor and political capacity of challengers, can be compared and charted over time. This will enable us to see which "moments" provided opportunities for either group to attempt to institute an exclusionary or caste policy to enhance its economic self- interest. Also, this design will reveal why that opportunity would, or would not, have been successful in a particular socio- historical context. An objective of this thesis is to test the applicability of the split labor market theory to Sao Paulo during the First Republic, 1889-1930. If the presence of certain conditions (x) leads to ethnic antagonism and racial public policies of exclusion or caste (y), then it is logical to assert that the absence of these same conditions (x*) will result in an absence of racial public policies (y'). In essence, the application of the split labor market theory here is: if x -> y, then x' -> y'. 35 In the absence of systematic discussion about the development of such policies in Brazil—a discussion that takes into account the economic and historical differences between Sao Paulo and the northeast, for example, and the social impact of an influx of European immigration that tipped the Brazilian color continuum from darker to lighter—this paper seeks to put forth a probable analytic argument as to why racial public policies did not develop in Brazil, particularly Sao Paulo. By focusing on Sao Paulo—the state where the greatest potential for ethnic competition appears to have existed—I hope to reveal the diversity in the development of ethnic relations in Brazil and to provide a systematic way of comparing ethnic relations in other Brazilian states without blurring important distinctions or relying on a singular generalized history. This paper also makes use of an implicit comparative method. Comparing the Brazilian case with those of the United States and South Africa helps show how apparently similar socio-economic structures can result in dramatically different public policies. 36 Chapter Three: Definition of Competing Groups This chapter investigates the first two aspects of the split labor theory research design as diagrammed in chapter two: 1) the presence of two or more potentially competing and ethnically defined labor groups and, 2) the location of these groups in the same labor sector. These two aspects are basic to the split labor-market theory, and considered in the context of the Sao Paulo model, provide a more accurate assessment of the degree of competition between black and white wage laborers.

3.1 Ethnic Definition of Competing Groups Foreign Labor The immigration program installed initially by the planters and later by the state government of Sao Paulo brought in enormous amounts of foreign immigrants in a relatively short period. The following chart provides some indication of the scope of this immigration: Table 3. Immigration Trends in the state of Sao Paulo Years Arrivals Departures 1827-1884 37,481 1885-1889 168,127 1890-1899 735,076 1900-1909 388,708 65,262 (1908-09) 1910-1919 480,509 247,927 1920-1929 712,436 234,342 Total 2,522,337 547,531 source: Florestan Fernandes. The Negro in Brazilian Society. New York: Columbia University Press, 1970: 124 37

The vast majority of these immigrants were Italians. In 1890, for example, Italians comprised over 60% of the immigrant population in the capital.36 With regard to industrial workers, by 1900, 92 percent of those in the state of Sao Paulo were foreign—with 81 percent of them from Italy.37 In the rural sector, where the subsidized immigrants (called "colonos") were sent, Italians were the most plentiful of foreign-born labor and their numbers were more or less comparable to that of the native workforce. The prevalence of ambivalence and hostility dividing European immigrant groups indicates a fairly high level of ethnic self-identification. In fact, Michael Hall attributes much of the failure of working-class movements in Brazil during the First Republic to such conflict between ethnically divided unions: Strikes, for example, were lost with some frequency because of the lack of trust and cooperation among different nationalities. When a group of Italian bricklayers struck in protest against the lowering of wages in 1914, they were quickly defeated because their Spanish and Portuguese co-workers refused to join them ... the example was not an isolated one.38 Even within the Italian immigrant population there is evidence of rivalry and conflict. The vast majority of colonos (between

^Fernandes, The Negro in Brazilian Society, p. 9-10.

37Michael Hall. "Immigration and the Early Sao Paulo Working Class," Jahrbuch fur Geschichte von Staat, Wirtschaft, und Gesellschaft Lateinamerikas 12 (1975), p. 394. ^Hall, "Immigration and the Early Sao Paulo Working Class," p. 398. 38 1897-1902) were from Northern Italy. Most were Venetian tenant farmers and agricultural laborers eager to flee an Italy that was incapable of aborbing them into its sluggish economy.39 This changed after 1902 when the Italian government banned subsidized immigration. From that time until major immigration subsided in the late 1920s, the majority of Italian immigrants were Sicilians or other southern Italians—most of whom had urban, working-class backgrounds.40 Many of those in this second wave of Italian immigrants found themselves marginalized within the industrial workforce because of the labor surplus and prejudice of their northern Italian counterparts.41 In addition, many second wave Italians were also used as strikebreakers against fellow Italians unionists who had arrived in Sao Paulo in the late nineteenth century.42

Native Labor Several scholars of Brazilian race relations have suggested that the presence of a color continuum as opposed to color

39Lucio Kowarick. The Subjugation of Labour: The Constitution of Capitalism in Brazil. (Amsterdam: Centre for Latin American Research and Documentation, 1987), p. 83. Michael Hall, "Approaches to Immigration History,*' New Approaches to Latin American History, ed. Richard Graham and Peter H. Smith. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1974), p. 180.

40Hall, "Approaches to Immigration History," p. 180.

41Hall, "Immigration and the Early Sao Paulo Working Class," p. 397.

42Andrews, "Black and White Workers: Sao Paulo, Brazil, 1888- 1928," p. 502. 39 territories has made for a slippery conception of ethnicity for many Brazilians with African heritage.43 This was often a source of significant friction and conflict: The colored community was torn by internal tensions and antagonisms, of which the following were the most apparent: antagonism between Brazilian-bom free blacks and mulattoes and African-born slaves who had gained their freedom by purchase or legacy; antagonism between freemen and slaves, which was caused primarily by the former abusing and flaunting their liberty; and antagonism between the blacks and the mulattoes. There is evidence to suggest that socio-economic advances made by blacks in the late 1920s (when a small Afro-Brazilian middle class began to develop) contributed to the fragmentation of black ethnic cohesion through economic stratification within the group.45 These factors, combined with the overall social preference throughout Brazil for mulattoes over blacks, weakened ethnic identification among Brazilians of African heritage. Writing about the division between Afro-Brazilians, Degler notes: . . . distinction between mulattoes and Negroes . . . provides an escape from the disabilities of blackness for some colored people . . . "Look at my children," a woman of color said to an investigator. "They're

43See Fernandes, The Negro in Brazilian Society; Degler, Neither Black Nor White; Hasenbalg, Race Relations in Modern Brasil; and Nacimento, "Aspects of Afro-Brazilian Experience". 44A.J.R. Russell-Wood. "Colonial Brazil," Neither Slave Nor Free. ed. David W. Cohen and Jack P. Greene. (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1972), p. 117.

45Degler, Neither Black Nor White, p. 178. 40 white already. What's the use of fighting?46 3.2 Labor in the Rural Sector With the end of slavery in Brazil, the foremost problem for rural elites was the scarcity of cheap labor.47 To this end, Sao Paulo planters began a program of subsidized immigration to supersaturate the rural labor market and provide cheap labor for the coffee plantations. Also, providing Atlantic passage for European immigrants was, by then, much cheaper than the purchase of African slaves. As early as 1871, the provincial assembly in Sao Paulo voted subsidies to those agencies that were attracting and transporting families of Italian peasants to Brazil.48 In 1886, on the eve of abolition, another contract was signed that would bring in 90,000 European immigrants in three years.49 The costs for this immigration escalated in a very short time: in 1881, the Provincial Government only spent 45,848$476 on immigrants' fares. By 1886, this figure had risen to 1,132,394$691. National totals for subsidized immigration between 1881 and 1917 were 137,219,379$465, with an overwhelming share of those funds coming from the state of Sao Paulo alone—

46Ibid. p. 178.

47Warren Dean. The Industrialisation of Sao Paulo, 1880-1945. (Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 1969), p. 35.

48Ibid. p. 35. See also Andrews, "Black and White Workers: Sao Paulo, Brazil, 1888-1928," p. 493. 49Dean, The Industrialisation of Sao Paulo, 1888-1945, p. 36. 41 approximately 92,000,000$000.so New arrivals to Sao Paulo were steered directly to the plantations. Part of their labor contract/Atlantic passage was a stipulation that colonos would not be permitted to stay in towns such as Sao Paulo city or the port of Santos. Also, colonos would not be permitted to tend subsistence plots for themselves once the coffee trees were ready to be harvested.51 As Kowarick points out, this was part of the double-pronged strategy to control labor—both as it remained in the rural sector as well as to stave off the migration of immigrants to the larger cities in search of better employment opportunities. While the steady inflow of immigrants—and the resultant labor surplus—may have made some colonos reluctant to break a contract with a planter for fear of not finding other employment, the tendency of many planters to establish labor contracts for as long as five years suggests that control of the immigrant labor force remained a high priority.52 This sort of control was virtually impossible to maintain over the liberto population once the wage labor system was in place.

S0Kowarick, The Subjugation of Labour, pp. 72 and 82. Note on Brazilian currency: "The standard of currency in Brazil was, until 1942, the milreis. One milreis was written 1$000. The fractional currency was the real (plural reis), 1,000 to the milreis. Thus two hundred hundred reis would be written $200. The conto was used in quoting large sums of money. It equaled 1,000 milreis and was written 1:000$000," Dean, The Industrialisation of Sao Paulo, p. xv. 51Dean, The Industrialisation of Sao Paulo, 1888-1945, p. 5.

52Kowarick, The Subjugation of Labour, p. 72. 42 Libertos i wage labor According to Sao Paulo census data, the majority of blacks and mulattoes was free as early as 1872. Of a total population of 837,354, 433,432 were white; 39,465 were mestizo; 208,215 were free black and mulatto; and 156,612 were slave black and mulatto.53 This population of free blacks and mulattoes was due in part to mass escapes and efforts by Sao Paulo planters to wean themselves from slave labor by employing peasant immigrants from Europe. The transition to wage labor in the rural sector was further facilitated by the reluctance of libertos to work under slave-like conditions: For most freedmen and women, this meant not accepting employment on plantations where they had been slaves. As one liberta declared in explaining why she was leaving the plantation where she had been born and raised, "I'm a slave and if I stay here, I'll remain a slave". Although slaves were often sent away to be trained in a fairly wide variety of skills, the very nature of plantation life— widespread illiteracy and geographic isolation and ignorance— made notions of migrating to other regions or to cities a difficult prospect for many in the era immediately following emancipation.55

"Andrews, "Black and White Workers: Sao Paulo, Brazil, 1888- 1928," p. 507. 54Ibid. p. 514.

55Herbert S. Klein. "Nineteenth-Century Brazil," Neither Slava Nor Free. ed. David W. Cohen and Jack P. Greene. (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1972), p. 326. 43 Immigrants and the rural sector Clearly there were advantages to the employment of peasant Italians in the rural workforce—foremost among them, the willingness of Italian immigrants to work under conditions that both Brazilian nationals and libertos refused to tolerate. With there being little or no evidence of wage differences between immigrant labor and native labor, black or white, it becomes clear that working conditions were the main issue separating the labor groups in the rural sector. This does not dismiss the presence of ethnic preferences for European/white labor. As commentators have pointed out, stereotypes of the inherent laziness of Brazilian workers, black and white, made native labor unattractive for many planters.56 But this distaste for native labor most evident in Sao Paulo, the only state that could afford subsidized immigration from Europe.57 This suggests that it was the reluctance of black and white Brazilians to work under the conditions of plantation labor in the years leading up to abolition that helped make immigrant labor as attractive as it was. The fact that planters planned to "deal with the new

European workers as ruthlessly as they had with the slaves who the immigrants replaced ..." encourages the notion that Brazilian white supremacy did not include poor white peasants from

56Kowarick, The Subjugation of Labour. Fernandes, The Negro in Brazilian Soceity.

57Andrews, "Black and White Workers: Sao Paulo, Brazil, 1888- 1928," p. 508. 44 Europe.58 Moreover it has been argued that the stereotypes of laziness that were attributed to Brazilian nationals, for example, were excuses used by Sao Paulo planters to justify both the importation of African slaves and peasant immigrants from Europe.59 Thus, in the rural sector, the presence of two different labor groups was more sequential than simultaneous. Blacks were at the same time gaining freedom and being slipped out of the framework of the wage labor system that was developing as a result, in part, of that same freedom. Although even this suggests some period of overlap where the two groups might have been in competition, the fact that the two labor groups—Afro- Brazilians and Italian immigrants—were moving in opposite directions vis-a-vis the rural wage labor market precludes open conflict between them. The emphasis for libertos on working conditions as opposed to the immigrants concern for wages at any cost indicates the divergent paths taken by the two groups and suggests how, in a context of wage labor, two distinct labor groups were present but not neither conflictual nor cooperative.

58Dean, The Industrialization of Sao Paulo, 1888-1945, p. 42.

59Kowarick, The Subjugation of Labour, pp. 92 and 99. 45 3.3 Labor in the Urban sector migrant Italians Labor contracts for Italian colonos were intended to direct them from the port of Santos directly to the coffee fazendas in the interior of Sao Paulo. Nonetheless, many immigrants managed to remain in towns and cities along the eastern coast of the state.60 But from the rural sector itself, two factors tended to encourage the migration of agricultural laborers from the countryside to the cities. The intentional supersaturating of the rural labor market left many immigrants (not to mention black and white native Brazilians) unemployed. When overproduction in the 1890s produced a dramatic collapse in coffee prices and worker's wages, a large contingent of rural workers began to migrate to urban areas—especially the city of Sao Paulo. The capital of Sao Paulo in the late nineteenth century was a rapidly expanding metropolis, as the 1886 and 1893 census reveal:

Table 4. Growth of the Population of the city of Sao Paulo 1886 and 1893 1886 % 1893 % segments Native-born whites 24,249 52 44,748 34 Foreign-born whites 12,085 26 70,978 54

"ibid. p. 84. 46

Blacks 3,825 8 5,920 5 Mulattoes 6,450 14 8,634 7

Totals 46,609 100 130,280 100 source: Fernandes, The Negro in Brasilian Society, p. 30.

Although it is difficult to ascertain the number of Italians who had arrived in the city of Sao Paulo as migrants from the rural sector, by 1894 the number of foreign-born whites who were Italian was approximately 44,854.61 Thus, in the city of Sao Paulo, the Italian population not only rivals the black and mulatto population, but also the population of white Brazilians. The overwhelming predominance of immigrant labor in the industrial workforce and the sizeable labor surplus both helped inhibit the absorption of Afro-Brazilians and white Brazilians into the ranks of formal industrial labor. By 1893, immigrants made up 79 percent of manufacturing employees, 85.5 percent of artisans and craftsmen, 81 percent of those involved in transportation, and 71.6 percent of those involved in commercial activity.62 Hall notes that, in 1900, 92 percent of overall industrial workers throughout Sao Paulo state were foreign-born—with 81 percent being Italian.63 Moreover, many Brazilian-born workers early in the twentieth century were

61Fernandes, The Negro in Brasilian Society, p. 9-10. "Fernandes, "Immigration and Race Relations in Sao Paulo," p. 394.

63Hall, "Immigration and the Early Sao Paulo Working Class," p. 394 47 the children of immigrants. The high rate of employment of these second-generation Brazilians around the 1920s suggests that they were still considered suffficiently foreign to receive preferential hiring in the industries of Sao Paulo.64 This conclusion takes into consideration the fact that the capital's foreign-born population dropped from 50 percent to 35 percent by 1920 while they still remained the majority in most industries including textiles (slight majority), transport and commerce.

Afro-Brazilians Before the mass arrivals of immigrants to the city of Sao Paulo, before the end of slavery, free blacks had been present in the city as artisans and petite "entrepreneurs".65 Between 1798 and 1886, the ratio of free Afro-Brazilians to slave Afro- Brazilians in the city of Sao Paulo remained more or less three to one> This suggests that some forms of nonindentured labor were already common among the black Brazilian population.66 In states such as Minas Gerais and Rio de Janeiro, black and mulatto laborers in the late nineteenth century comprised significant percentages of industries in both the manufacturing and commerce

^Andrews, "Black and White Workers: Sao Paulo, Brazil, 1888- 1928," p. 504. 65Andrews, "Black and White Workers: Sao Paulo, Brazil, 1888- 1928," p. 507. ^aria Luzia Marcilio. A Cidade de Sao Paulo: Povoamento • Populacao, 1750-1850. (Sao Paulo: Editora da Universidade de Sao Paulo, 1968), p. 107. 48 sectors of those economies.67 The difference between these states and Sao Paulo in terms of ethnically-based labor stratification in the urban sector is two-fold: for one, industrialization in Sao Paulo initially lagged behind that of Rio and Minas, due largely to the overwhelming influence of the coffee-based, rural elites. Secondly, only in Sao Paulo was there the massive introduction of immigrant labor in the late nineteenth century. Several commentators have suggested that, in the absence of these two factors, Afro-Brazilian penetration into the Sao Paulo urban workforce would have more resembled that of neighboring states such as Minas Gerais and Rio.68 Most libertos did not opt to migrate to the urban centers69 of Sao Paulo and Santos until the early 1930s when industrialization under the Vargas administration was fully underway and the curtailment of immigration meant more jobs for native labor—black and white. But before this time, most libertos remained in the rural sector working on plantations or as subsistence farmers. As Table 4. "Growth of the Population of

67Klein, "Nineteenth-Century Brazil," p. 331. "see Klein, "Nineteenth-Century Brazil"; Fernandes, The Negro in Brazilian Society; and Andrews, "Black and White Workers: Sao Paulo, Brazil, 1888-1928."

69"0n the eve of Abolition the slave were fleeing from the Sao Paulo coffee plantations and going down the Serra do Mar to live in the overcrowded shanty-towns of Santos ... in the context of the economic situation in this period, with few job opportunities, many slaves failed to find other ways to survive and went back to the coffee plantations," Kowarick, The Subjugation of Labour, p. 77. 49 the City of Sao Paulo" above reveals, the urban Afro-Brazilian population did not grow nearly as rapidly as either the native- born or foreign-born white populations. Fernandes has suggested that this is due to the impermanence of black migration to the capital city as opposed to the more permanent migration of the

European-born immigrant.70 Those Afro-Brazilians who did migrate to the cities, however, often found it difficult to integrate into formal industrial occupations. As two black Brazilians remembered life in Sao Paulo's urban sector during the mid-to-late 1920s: There were almost as many blacks as Italians in those days, in Sao Paulo, (but) they lived in a state of total disintegration . . . The immigrants were in the factories and in commerce. The only work left for the blacks was to clean houses and offices, cart wood, and other chores. We were all underemployed.71 Such "total disintegration" was evidenced initially in black urban communities by chronic unemployment, depressed wages and

irregular seasonal work.72 This material deprivation was linked to a wide variety of social ills as well, including alcoholism, prostitution and criminality. Many of these social ills were equally present in ghetto communities of poor Italians, leading some to assert that these ills were more a function of poverty

70Fernandes, The Negro in Brazilian Society, p. 30.

71Andrews, "Black and White Workers: Sao Paulo, Brazil, 1888- 1928," p. 505. 72Corwin, "Afro-Brazilians: Myths and Realities," pp. 397-398. 50 and status as an underclass than some particular characteristic of a particular ethnic group.73 Still, the presence of these social ills served to reinforce the negative stereotypes of both black and white Brazilians and further legitimized the employment of Italians and other European immigrant groups over native labor.

3.4 Chapter Summary It is clear that within Sao Paulo there existed two different labor groups in the same sector that were ethnically defined—Italians and black Brazilians. This remained true throughout the First Republic in both the rural and urban sectors. As has been established, however, they were not necessarily in competition in the rural sector because of their separate approaches to the opportunity of wage labor. These approaches had Italians initially flocking to agricultural work while Afro-Brazilians were much less eager to return to slave­ like labor. The possibility for conflict in the urban sector, however, remained—the incidents of strikebreaking at the port of Santos in the late nineteenth century, for example, are a case in point. Unlike in the rural sector, both Italians and blacks had come to the cities looking for wage labor. To summarize, consider table five which compares the two

^Andrews, "Black and White Workers: Sao Paulo, Brazil, 1888- 1928," p. 513. 51 primary labor groups by ethnic self-identification and location:

Table 5. Definition of Competing Labor Groups in Sao Paulo During the rirst Republic 1885 1900 1915 1930 competing groups ethnically defined yes yes yes yes labor groups in same sector —rural yes slight slight slight --urban no yes yes yes Thus the opportunities for competition between blacks and whites were most prevalent in the urban sector after the turn of the century in areas where ethnic identification and presence in the same sector were both present. This, however, only establishes a basis for competition. The price of labor—discussed in the next chapter—outlines the differences between the two labor groups as well as the increased or decreased likelihood of ethnic, labor- oriented conflict over time. 52 Chapter Four: Fries of Labor In this chapter, price of labor criterion suggests characteristics that differentiate Afro-Brazilian labor from Italian immigrant labor in both the rural and urban sectors. These differences in the price of labor illustrate why Italian immigrants were preferred over native labor and why they remained preferred labor until the last decade of the First Republic. I discuss in each section only the criterion of the split-labor theory that shows a significant difference between the two labor groups. When a particular criterion is not mentioned for a labor group, it is because there is no significant change in that group's information, level of living, permanancy, etc. from the previous mentioning.

4.1 information: Afro-Brazilians The refusal of freed slaves to work under conditions very much like those of slavery contributed greatly to their exclusion from the rural workforce. Commentators such as Florestan Fernandes have suggested that the "anti-capitalist nature" of libertos rendered them psychologically and socially incapable of functioning as wage laborers in an increasingly competitive social and economic order.74 This "anticapitalist nature" was seen to be the result of years of servitude and paternalism in slavery. Disagreeing, Andrews suggests that the real effect of

74Fernandes, The Negro in Brazilian Society and his "Immigration and Race Relations in Sao Paulo." slavery in the development of competitive relations was to make libertos exceptionally difficult bargainers vis-a-vis former slaveowners—now wage-paying employers. In the post-emancipation period, many of the labor practices of slavery—such as female and child field labor—were excluded from the libertos* conception of free labor. Additionally, many libertos who did continue to work in the agricultural sector moved into shantytowns and huts on the outskirts of the planters' fields— thus depriving fazendeiros of a significant amount of social control. This social control was a major factor in the ability of planters to take full advantage of the highly fluid labor situation they had created through the subsidized immigration program. As Andrews concludes: This xnewer' South America offered no place for the Afro-Brazilians. They had bargained too hard, and demanded too much. Some of the more enlightened employers could understand the motives behind those demands, and how the experience of slavery had produced a deep determination among all Brazilians, and particularly black ones, to avoid conditions of employment at all reminiscent of the slave regime ...75 What seems to be the greatest determinate of the post- emancipation Afro-Brazilian price of labor was what Bonacich refers to as "information," or an understanding of competitive wages and working conditions, that can prevent labor from being

^Andrews, "Black and White Workers: Sao Paulo, Brazil 1888- 1928," p. 518-519. 54 taken advantage of by employers.76 Writing about the rise of slave escapes in the years leading up to abolition, Fernandes suggests that N[the slaves] escape and abandon the farms because their minds ... no longer can understand work without remuneration, because they know that the rural settler . . . has savings, has his joys and, lives much better ...' ,77 This parallels the post-abolition attitudes of freed slaves. While the primary issue for libertos was not wages, as might be assumed from Fernandes' observation, ex-slaves did have a fairly profound sense of what "free" labor could mean in a competitive economic order.78 With that in mind, they acted as best they could to guarantee their own interests before entering labor agreements. This suggests why, perhaps, former slaves, already long accustomed to the type of agricultural labor desired by planters, were replaced by an outside labor force.79 This black resistance to working in substandard conditions not only helped marginalize Afro-Brazilians from the rural workforce, but also diminished their desirability to employers in the industrial sector. In

76Bonacich, "A Theory of Ethnic Antagonism: The Split Labor Market," p. 550. ^Fernandes, "Immigration and Race Relations in Sao Paulo," p. 130-131. ^Andrews, "Black and White Workers: Sao Paulo, Brazil, 1888- 1928," p. 514. ^Some debate remains as to the difference in efficiency between wage labor (immigrant and native) and slave labor. See Joseph L. Love. Sao Paulo in the Brazilian Federation, 1889-1937. (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1980), p. 74-75. 55 fact, it was not until the 1930s and 1940s that Afro-Brazilians began to enter the industrial labor force in significant numbers and to assume jobs with greater responsibilities, better conditions, wages and vertical mobility.80

4.2 Information: Italian immigrants In contrast to the Afro-Brazilian population, the price of labor for the immigrant workforce was low, based, in part, on their ignorance of the price of rural labor in Sao Paulo. Bonacich's reading of the situation likely to develop with regard to immigrant labor and capital is almost identical to what happened to poor Italian immigrants upon arriving in Sao Paulo. She writes: Information—Immigrants may be pushed into signing contracts out of ignorance. They may agree to a specific wage in their homeland not knowing the prevailing wage in the new country, or having been beguiled by a false account of life and opportunity there.81 Whereas black Brazilians were familiar with the conditions they would have been subjected to had they remained as laborers on the same coffee plantations where they had been enslaved, Italian immigrants during the late nineteenth century had no idea of what

onRoger Bastide.t "The Development of Race Relationst int Brazil,** Industrialisation and Rao* Relations. ed. Guy Hunter. (London: Oxford University Press, 1965), p. 11.

81Bonacich, "A Theory of Ethnic Antagonism: The Split Labor Market," p. 550. 56 to expect upon arriving in Brazil.82 In the landowners' favor was the mystique of "the Americas" as the land of opportunity.83 Seduced with free passage to the port of Santos, clothing and living quarters, prospective immigrants were undoubtably shocked to find themselves living and working in conditions very much like those of the slaves they were replacing. Although allowed to negotiate for job contracts upon arriving at the Immigrant Hostel in Sao Paulo city, colonos were subject to frequent wage cuts, beatings, curfews and other harsh controls and punishments.84 Treatment such as this led, in 1902, to the Italian government's decision to ban subsidized immigration of Italians to Brazil as well as to prohibit other European immigrants from leaving for Brazil through Italian ports.85 The Italian immigrants' lack of information ended when they became familiar with the particular socio-economic order of Sao Paulo. Urban migration contributed greatly to the Italians' awareness of options available to them as wage laborers— especially through involvement in labor unions. Generally unexperienced in politics and working-class organization, even the most limited, reformist unions helped educate Italians to the

^Hall, "Approaches to Immigration History," p. 183. ^Kowarick, The Subjugation of Labour, p. 83. ^Love, Sao Paulo in the Brazilian Federation, 1889-1937, p. 75.

85Lucy Maffei Hutter. Inigracao Italiana em Sao Paulo em 1902- 1914: O Processo Iaigratorio. (Sao Paulo, Instituto de Estudos Brasileiros, CESP, 1986), p. 3. advantages of collective action in securing economic and social concessions from employers.86 As Andrews notes: The planter state had sought policies which would keep labor cheap and insecure, and it found them. Such victories are never permanent, however. In the short run or in the long, they produce resistance and response ... a final response was collective: joining an urban labor movement which enlisted growing numbers of adherents in the cities . . . during the early decades of the century. This shift in information, coinciding with other factors, was the first major break in the relationship between Sao Paulo capital and immigrant labor. As Italians increasingly realized their value in vital industries such as textiles—as well as their own interests as laborers—they became the hard bargainers and, in turn, sparked a backlash among Brazilian elites who began to regard the immigrants as ingrates.88

4.3 Level of Living: Italian immigrants Sao Paulo's immigration program attracted the poorest and least skilled of European immigrants. Those immigrants with some training, education or savings opted instead for Argentina or the United States. Moreover, immigrants were brought over

^Hall, "Immigration and the Early Sao Paulo Working Class," p. 395.>5.

87Andrews, "Black and White Workers: Sao Paulo, Brazil, 1888- 1928," p. 520. 'ibid. p. 520. 'ibid. p. 516. 58 generally in family units: 80 percent of those entering Sao Paulo city's "immigrant hostel" entered as families, with an average size of five persons per family unit. The reason planters encouraged families was two-fold. For one, it was assumed that male laborers with families would be less likely to break labor contracts or to move frequently from employer to employer. But more importantly, planters were interested in exploiting the labor of women and children in much the same manner as they had • * on , whole families of slaves. This use of family labor—and the capitulation to it by Italian immigrants—was a major component of the planters' preference for immigrant labor over liberto and native labor. The displacement of libertos by immigrants in the rural sector can be understood in these terms. Bonacich notes that "the poorer the economy of the recruits, the less the inducement needed for them to enter the new labor market. Crushing poverty may drive them to sell their labor relatively cheaply."91 Additionally, the fact that immigrants were willing to put their entire families to work—in both the rural and urban sectors—increased their appeal to employers. Rather than a fortunate by-product of the subsidized immigration program, immigrants with families were intentionally sought out.

'Verena Stolke. "The Exploitation of Family Morality: Labor Systems and Family Structure on Sao Paulo Coffee Plantations, 1850- 1979," Kinship Ideology and Practice in Latin America, ed. Raymond T. Smith. (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1984), p. 269.

91Bonacich, "A Theory of Ethnic Antagonism: The Split Labor Market," p. 549. 59 One study of four Italian villages revealed that women made up between one third and one half of the agricultural workforce in 1881. Further, "even in families which did not permit women to

accept paid employment, %an expected part of a wife's year-round labors would include joining the family in crop harvesting,H.92 This style of living did not change until the beginning of the twentieth century. To a degree, it coincided both with the growing population of urban Italians involved in the labor movement and the identification of Brazil-as-home for an increasing number of foreign-born workers.93 Although the full effects of this will be discussed in the next section, it suffices to say here that the unwillingness of Italian immigrants to allow the exploitation of women and children in the workforce was a major factor in the immigrant workers' fall from favor in the eyes of Sao Paulo industrialists. Further, it helped pave the way—with other factors—for eventual advances by previously marginalized groups such as white and black Brazilians in the late 1920s and early 1930s.

4.4 Permanancy: Italian immigrants Bonacich suggests that temporary workers, in general, have two major advantages over more permanent workers: First, they are more willing to put up with

92Andrews, "Black and White Workers: Sao Paulo, Brazil, 1888- 1928," p. 517. 93Hall, "Immigration and the Early Sao Paulo Working Class," p. 404. 60 undesireable work conditions since these need not be endured forever. If they are migrants, this tolerance may extend to the general standard of living . . . Even when families accompany them, such workers tend to be willing to accept a lower standard of living since it is only short term. This reflects the attitude of many Italian immigrants to Sao Paulo toward their labor on the coffee fazendas. Fleeing from tragic economic conditions in their native Italy, a great many saw Sao Paulo as "a short-term expedient to earn money and return home with capital" and "the only way to build such a nest egg was through brute physical labor, paid at whatever wage was available".95 The transitory nature of colonos labor was initially a source of consternation for planters who desired almost complete social control over the workforce. However, it soon was seen as an asset insofar as the increase in immigrants provided for a constant flow of new labor to replace those who left one plantation for another or left the rural sector altogether. This "impermanance" of immigrant labor in the rural sector of the late nineteenth century economy changed after the turn of the century. Increasingly, Italian immigrants came to see Brazil—not Italy—as their true home. Several factors account for this, including intermarriage with Brazilian nationals, the geographic isolation brought on by the First World

94Bonacich, "A Theory of Ethnic Antagonism: The Split Labor Market," p. 551. ^Hall, "Appraoches to Immigration History," p. 182-183; Andrews, "Black and White Workers: Sao Paulo, Brazil, 1888-1928," p. 516. 61 War, and the failure of most immmigrants to amass enough capital to make return to Europe reasonable. Even if return had been more feasible, many Italian immigrants in the rural sector were able in time to achieve a higher standard of living in Brazil than would have been possible in Italy.96 Speaking of the tendency of Italians to return to Europe, Hall notes that most of those who did return came from the rural coffee sector rather than the urban proletariat.97 In the urban sector, the swelling ranks of labor unions and the increased willingness of foreign-born worker unions to go on strike suggest in part that the "highest wage at any cost" attitude that had prevailed among colonos in the late nineteenth century was beginning to shift. Working conditions, which had never been a major issue for rural immigrant laborers, soon became a primary issue for labor unions of all stripes, from anarcho-syndicalist organizations to the reformist unions more popular among the immigrant proletariat. For example, refering to the 1907 general strike in the city of Sao Paulo, Hall suggests:

The prevailing hours of work in Sao Paulo in 1907 were not exceptionally long by European standards and anyone choosing to strike for the eight-hour day, rather than for higher wages, is presumably intending to stay around for some time and enjoy the benefits of his

96Love, Sao Paulo in the Brazilian Federation, 1889-1937, p. 77.

97Hall, "Immigration and the Early Sao Paulo Working Class," p. 400. 62 victory.98 Other later major strikes in the capital city, although less successful and widespread than the 1907 strike, were similar in their emphasis on working conditions. The 1917 strike called for limits on women and child labor while a second strike two years later demanded an end to night labor for women and the elimination of child labor altogether." Insofar as female and child labor were initially encouraged by Italian patriarchs as a means to gain rapid savings, this change in attitude suggests two things. One, that Italian workers were increasingly concerned about their own jobs being undercut by the exploitation of cheaper female and child labor; and, two, rapid accumulation of savings had fallen away as a primary concern among immigrant populations.

4.5 chapter Summary The price of labor for Afro-Brazilians and Italians varied over time, shaping their preferred status in the minds of Sao Paulo capitalists. The impermanance of the Italian laborer, plus his lack of information combined with the planter's ability to exploit the labor of entire families, made immigrant labor irresistible to most fazendeiros. At the same time, libertos

^all, "Immigration and the Early Sao Paulo Working Class," p. 404. "John W. F. Dulles. Anarchists and Communists in Brasil, 1900-1935. (Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 1973), pp. 47-55, 81-84. 63 were increasingly marginalized from rural labor as their attempts to secure favorable labor agreements for themselves were undercut by immigrant workers. However, the longer immigrants stayed in Sao Paulo, the less "irresistible" their labor became—especially in the urban sector. These foreign-born workers joined unions, participated in strikes for higher wages and better working conditions, and even began to protest the exploitation of female and child labor. These changes in the immigrants' price of labor, coupled with the declines in immigration, slowly brought about a revised approach to native labor—black and white. Increasingly, the major difference between native labor and immigrant labor was in political resources: the capacity of the immigrant workforce to strike versus the historic disinterest of native workers in organized labor. The template for the price of labor over time is illustrated below:

Table 6. Ethnicity and the Price of Labor in Sao Paulo During the First Republic 1885 1900 1915 1930 price of labor ~permanancy Italian low moderate high high --permanancy Afro-Brazilian moderate moderate moderate moderate —information Italian low moderate high high —information Afro-Brazilian high high high high —level of living 64 Italian low low moderate high ~l«v«l of living Afro-Brazilian moderate moderate moderate moderate

There were two possible instances when either group might have attempted to block the other from receiving preferential treatment in the workplace. The first would be a nativist attempt during the immigrant's arrival into the rural sector in the late nineteenth century. Some reasons as to why this did not occur have already been provided in this chapter. The second would have been a foreign-born attempt during the "rebound" of native labor during the 1910s and 1920s. Given the growing strength of the foreign-worker controlled labor movement, some effort to insure the marginality of native Brazilian labor could have been attempted. In the next chapter, I will analyze the political capacity of various groups to discover whether such attempts to box-out competing labor could have been made into public policy through the political influence of the two challenger groups. 65 Chapter rive: Political Capacity of Labor Racism as public policy does not develop in the absence of political organization on the part of labor groups. This is suggested by both the South African and United States models. Whether this political organization is elite-based, as in the development of the Black Codes of the United States, or are based on the counter-mobilization of higher-priced labor groups, as in the instances of American Jim Crow, the South African color bar and apartheid, political organization is necessary in order to translate economic goals into social reality. Chapters three and four explain the economic goals of the various groups at different moments in time during the First Republic. This chapter, investigates the avenues to political power that were available to Italian immigrants and the black Brazilian population—avenues that would have been crucial in any attempt to install exclusionary racial public policies.

5.1 Overview: Sao Paulo's Political Society A brief survey of the development of the Paulista political society serves two functions. For one, it reveals the economic and political agendas of urban and rural elites, showing the great influence of the coffee sector over the emergent industrial sector and, in turn, over Paulista and federal politics. Second, this survey will illustrate the difficulties faced by challenger groups in attempting to assert collectively their socio-economic and political interests versus an oligarchical government largely 66 indifferent to the demands of labor and the working-classes.

Agricultural sector During the First Republic, coffee was central to both Brazilian economics and politics. As early as 1900, the centrality of coffee to the Brazilian economy had been established. In 1901, almost 15 million, 60 kilogram sacks were exported, making Brazil the producer of nearly 75 percent of the total world's supply.100 "[T]he basis of Brazilian wealth," chimed Sao Paulo governor Julio Prestes during his 1929 quest for the presidency and, by the late 1920s, coffee was responsible for

over 70 percent of Brazil's export earnings.101 Paulista government officials were quick to exploit the significance of coffee in the Brazilian economy through a variety of subsidies and loans known as "valorization." This program was one in which foreign loans were secured by the Brazilian government to purchase coffee from domestic planters. This coffee would be warehoused in anticipation of bad harvest years, during which the supply would be released into the international market. In the meanwhile—during good harvest years—exported coffee would be taxed at a rate high enough to insure profits and to pay back the

foreign loan.102

100Skidmore and Smith, Modern Latin America, p. 149. 101Love, Sao Paulo in the Brasilian Federation, 1889-1937, p. 37-38.

102Ibid. p. 45. 67 Such risky economic ventures—considering the elasticity of the demand for coffee—help reveal the political influence Brazilian coffee elites exerted on economic policy. According to Love, the Sao Paulo political elite was involved more extensively in the economy than other states such as Minas Gerais and Pernambuco. There were, for example, twice as many "fazendeiros" (planters) proportionately in the Sao Paulo elite compared to both Minas and Pernambuco. This further suggests a strong, if not vital, link between economic elites and political elites within Sao Paulo. Such a link provides for a smoother translation of economic goals into political programs. Even before the valorization program of the early 1900s, the subsidized immigration program itself was evidence of the ability of the agricultural elite to assert its will in the government over popular and other elite challenges such as those in the abolitionist movement who advocated spending state funds on education and training for the newly-emancipated slaves.103

The Republican Party was the vehicle for formal political expression among Sao Paulo elites. Its platform, argued initially in 1870, was one of administrative decentralization, provincial control of banking and immigration policies, as well s the decentralization of revenues.104 It is clear that this appeal

103Andrews, "Black and White Workers: Sao Paulo, Brazil, 1888- 1928," p. 493, 495.

104Love, Sao Paulo in the Brazilian Federation, 1889-1937, p. 103. 68 was a strong one for Paulista agricultural elites—particularly those involved in the coffee trade. Although there were a variety of intraparty conflicts in the early years of the party, the Republicans dominated state public office until the end of the First Republic. At the federal level, the "rotating" presidency was held by a Paulista for more than 24 of the 41

years of the First Republic.105 Minas Gerais held the presidency for only half as long (twelve years) as did all other states, including Rio Grade do Sul. Backed by some of the most prominent planters in the state, the Sao Paulo Republican party continued its program of support for immigration and decentralized authority throughout the First Republic. Its challengers were always slight—the older Liberal and Conservative parties being more or less holdovers from the days of the Empire. It was not until the mid-192Os that another party, the Democratic party, managed to steal away some of the agricultural elites' support for the Republicans. The Democrats were strong supporters of agriculture and, like the Republicans, neglected the industrial sector—even though much of their support came from "urban professionals".106 Elite support grew largely out of the dissatisfaction of coffee interests with the Republican party's approval of the federal government's decision to end the valorization program—as well as the Republicans'

105Skidmore and Smith, Modern Latin America, p. 156. 106Ibid. p. 159. 69

failure to bring the younger generation into its upper ranks.107 Although the Democrats won minor victories in federal assemblies, they never truly rivaled the Republican party and, by 1930, were virtually absorbed into the Liberal Alliance of Getulio Vargas.108 Other political movements, such as the Jacobins of the turn of the century and the Acao Social Nacionalista of the 1920s, attempted to wear away at the dominance of the "agricultural- export-oriented regime" but with even less success.109

Industrial sector Discussion of Paulista industry is in many ways tied directly to the discussion of Paulista agriculture (which, as the above section suggested, is intimately related to any discussion of Paulista politics). As Joseph Love notes: When coffee sales fell, the demand for industrial goods by consumers associated with the coffee sector (including colonos) also tended to fall, credit tightened up, and the outflow of immigrant workers and capital increased. At the same time, imported raw materials and machinery became scarcer, since exports governed the capacity to import . . • Much of Sao Paulo's industry during the First Republic was

107Love, Sao Paulo in the Brazilian Federation/ 1889-1937, p. 118. 108Dean, The Industrialization of Sao Paulo, 1880-1945, p. 182.

109Steven Topik. "Middle-Class Brazilian Nationalism, 1889- 1930: From Radicalism to Reaction," Social Science Quarterly 59:1 (June 1978), pp. 97, 100.

110Love, Sao Paulo in the Brazilian Federation, 1889-1937, p. 56-57. 70 financed through coffee profits and capital.111 This link, as will be discussed more below, between agricultural capital and industry helps explain the late, but rapid development of the Paulista urban/industrial sector and the monolithic nature of politics in Sao Paulo until the late 1920s. Industry in the early twentieth century in Sao Paulo did not play the decisive role in the economy that agriculture did— specifically coffee. A variety of factors historically inhibited the growth of industry—including the lack of a modern transportation network, a shortage of liquid capital and too-low tariff barriers that were unable to deflect competition from

British industries such as textiles.112 Perhaps the greatest obstacle, however, to Paulista industry was the rivalry of agricultural elites. Although banks were able to invest the profits from the coffee trade in the building of factories and other industrial works, the political strength of the agriculturally-allied Paulista and federal governments was such that industrial development was sharply limited until the late

1910s.113 It has been suggested that "the industrialists of Sao Paulo, during the thirty years following the establishment of the Republic . . . (were) nearly as important as the plantation . . .

111E. Bradford Burns. A History of Brazil. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970), pp. 211, 261.

112Ibid. p. 258. 113Ibid. p. 261. See also Dean, The Industrialization of Sao Paulo, 1880-1945, p. 112. 71 elites.114 But this speaks more of the direction Sao Paulo was headed than of where it actually was during the First Republic. While the raised tariffs of the 1910s and 1920s initially suggest some level of political strength for industrialists, this appears to be much less so considering that high tariffs were the only significant revenue source planters would grant the manufacturing sector.115 Options such as land taxes or taxes on incomes were even less attractive to agricultural elites and, given the revenue shortage of the First Republic administrations, the high tariffs were deemed inevitable.116 The economic dependence of the industrial sector on coffee profits was the basis of a political alliance between fazendeiros and emergent industrialists in which the latter was kept very much in its place: The industrialists were represented in the Paulista Republican Party by politicians sympathetic to their interests . . . but they were not heavily influential within "the situation" except on the narrowest of issues. In effect they had aligned themselves not with the reformist middle class but with the landowners . . .117 The only area where industrialists openly broke from the agricultural elite was on the issue of providing sufficient

1uDean, The Industrialisation of Sao Paulo, 1880-1945, p. 67.

115Steven Topik. The Political Economy of the Brasilian State, 1889-1930. (Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 1987), p. 144-145. 116Dean, The Industrialisation of Sao Paulo, 1880-1945, p. 71.

117Ibid. p. 72-73. 72 cotton for the Paulista textile mills.118 Even this came about during a period in the 1920s of general discontent with the dominance of the agricultural elite in Brazilian politics—with younger military officers and the urban middle class levying charges of electoral fraud and manipulation at the planter- controlled Republican party.119 A variety of industrialist associations were initiated, or resurfaced, during this time— such as the Commerical Association of Sao Paulo and the Center of Industries of the State of Sao Paulo—but their influence on the state remained slight.120 This was partly because of internal disputes among industrialists, but was also indicative of the general weakness of industry vis-a-vis agriculture and the Brazilian state during the First Republic.

5.2 Organization of Competing Groups Unions

The immigration of Europeans—especially Italians—to Sao Paulo was key to the development of industry there, especially the formation of an urban proletariat.121 Nonetheless, this largely Italian urban proletariat arrived in Sao Paulo in the

118Ibid. p. 132.

119Burns, A History of Brasil, p. 282. See also Jose Maria Bello. A History of Modern Brasil, 1889-1964. trans. James L. Taylor. (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1966), p. 277.

120Dean, The Industrialisation of Sao Paulo, 1880-1945, p. 140.

121Hall, "Approaches to Immigration History," p. 177. 73 late nineteenth century unfamiliar with both politics and working-class organization. Most Italian immigrants had come from the countryside where, in the late 1800s, political was rare, making Italian immigrants as ignorant of political parties, strikes and unions as the rest of the working-class Brazilian population.122 By the turn of the century, however, immigrants in Sao Paulo had begun to build a labor movement based largely upon the leadership of foreign-born workers. Although statistics on union membership are not available, a study of 106 labor leaders between 1900 and 1920 revealed that fewer than a third were native-born and, of that third, most were from Rio de Janeiro and not Sao Paulo. No evidence exists of Afro-Brazilians organizing themselves in an occupation-based manner during the First Republic. Marginalized from the formal proletariat and unions, black interraction with organized labor was principally through strikebreaking. In the 1891 dockworker strike in the Paulista port city of Santos, unemployed libertos were used to defeat a group of largely immigrant strikers. Again in 1908, black labor was transferred from the gravel quarries and road-building crews to take the jobs of striking immigrant dockworkers.124

122Hall, "Immigration and the Early Sao Paulo Working Class," p. 395.

123Andrews, "Black and White Workers: Sao Paulo, Brazil, 1888- 1928," p. 497.

124Ibid. p. 498. Additionally, blacks were used to help violently disrupt strikes (along with unemployed Sicilian immigrants), much to the anger and frustration of many progressive labor leaders: [W]hat hurts and embitters is to see the sons of yesterday's slaves today replacing the old "capitaes do mato" (hunters of runaway slaves) in the disgraceful mission of filling the ranks of those who beat up workers who are in search of their economic liberty and the improvement of their class by the only means at their disposal—the strike. Even within this rhetoric, and its ethnic identifications, there is no evidence of organized conflict between Italians and Afro- Brazilians—a stark contrast to the outcomes of similar labor conflict and strikebreaking activity in the United States, particularly between 1917-1919.126 Immigrant workers aligned themselves with reformist as well as anarcho-syndicalist, socialist and Communist labor unions. The conventional wisdom has been that immigrants, particularly Italians, were highly active in the leftist, more radical unions.

This was due to the widely publicized accounts of deportations of labor organizers from Brazil and the 1907 "Adolfo Gordo Law" which called for the expulsion of foreigners who "endanger[ed] the national security or public peace".127 Overall, however,

125Ibid. p. 501-502.

126William M. Tuttle, Jr. "Labor Conflict and Racial Violence: the Black Worker in Chicago, 1894-1919," Labor History 10 (Summer 1969), pp. 408, 412-413.

127Dulles, Anarchists and communists in Brazil, 1900-1935. (Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 1973), p. 21. 75 radicalism on the part of most immigrants was low. As Hall notes: The anarchists themselves . . . remarked with considerable frankness that the masses in Sao Paulo were "indifferent ... if not hostile" and one anarchist described the workers of the city as "fleeing" from them. It is not even clear that immigrants were over- represented among anarchists and other militants.128 All the same, the political nature of unionization remains— whether a union is reformist or radical in nature. This is particularly true in analyzing the relationship between capital and its formerly lower-priced labor force in Sao Paulo. As

Bonacich writes: By political resources I mean the benefits to a group of organizing ... In general, the weaker a group is politically, the more vunerable it is to the use of force, hence to an unfavorable wage bargain . . . However erratic the foreign worker unions were in terms of size and solidarity, their increasing number and strike activity throughout the First Republic130 was to urban elites a warning of the potential emergent political force within the working

128Hall, "Immigration and the Early Sao Paulo Working Class," p. 396.

129Bonacich, "A Theory of Ethnic Antagonism: The Split Labor Market," p. 550. 130Love notes "... there were only seven * primary, • or trade union, associations in the period 1888-1900. But the number then jumped dramatically—to 55 in 1901-14, to 91 in 1915-19 . . . Strikes to some extent mirrored these trends; there were 25 in the first period [1888-1900], 91 in the second [1901-14], and 116 in the third [1915-19] ..." Sao Paulo in the Brazilian Federation, 1889-1937, p. 230. 76

class.131 This threat was even more pronounced for the small but growing middle class of urban professionals and petite entrepreneurs—many of whom, during the 1920s, felt pinched between a dominant industrial elite and an increasingly vocal

working-class.132

Political Parties and Social Moveaents Italians did not play a major role in political parties until after the Second World War. Still, the vast majority of the working-class population—not just Italians—did not participate in federal or state elections. Suffrage was limited to literate adult male citizens which resulted in less than 3.5% of the population voting in any presidential election before 1930.133 Even in the absence of significant efforts to bar immigrants from participating in politics (one estimate suggests that as many as 90% of the Italians in Sao Paulo were eligible for citizenship) many initially held the attitudes that Brazil was not their home and Brazilian politics not their business.134 This suggests that the primary expression of political will on the part of the working-class came not through formal political

131Hall, "Immigration and the Early Sao Paulo Working Class," pp. 395, 397.

132Topik, "Middle-Class Brazilian Nationalism, 1889-1930: From Radicalism to Reaction," p. 98.

133Skidmore and Smith, Modern Latin America, p. 155.

134Hall, "Immigration and the Early Sao Paulo Working Class," p. 405. 77 parties, but through labor unions and similar craft-based organizations.

Afro-Brazilians, like most Brazilians, also did not play a major role in electoral politics during the First Republic. They did however forge various non-labor based organizations with socio-political goals. Although most of these organizations— including the largest, the Frente Negra Brasileira—were not developed until the thirties, signs of black political mobilization were visible as early as 1924 with the publication of Clarim da Alvorada ("Clarion of Dawn"). Although initiated with solely literary intentions, Clarin da Alvorada quickly became a forum in which racial issues were debated and discussed by the slowly growing black middle class.135 It was this middle class, not fully in evidence until almost fifteen years later, that sought to integrate blacks into Brazilian society through the promotion of values such as strong family ties, domestic cooperative, systematic savings, home ownership and male sexual responsibility.136 Although condemned by some white Brazilians as "expressions of black intolerance and racism", these movements

135Fernandes, The Negro in Brasilian Society, p. 196.

136Abraham Monk, Black and Whit* Race Relations in Brasil. (Buffalo, New York: Council on International Studies, SUNY Buffalo, 1971), p. 36. Richard M. Morse, "The Negro in Sao Paulo, Brazil," Journal of Negro History XXVIII (July 1953), p. 303. Fernandes, "Immigration and Race Relations in Sao Paulo," p. 134. 78 were anything but revolutionary.137 This anti-revolutionary attitude is most clear in a 1937 statement by the Frente Negra Braziliera—the largest black rights organization founded in 1931: We repel completely those countrymen who, erroneously [want to bring to Brazil] the Yankee Negro problem of hateful struggle against the white. That is not our temper. We reject the North American conception ...

In summary, as Florestan Fernandes notes "[n]egroes and mulattoes did not threated the social order instituted by Abolition and the Republic because they never questioned the material and psychological bases on which it rested".139 Even though early Afro-Brazilian organizations were both non-confrontational and patently non-radical, they remained largely ineffectual in national or state politics during the First Republic. Part of this is because of the absence of a black middle class.140 It was not until the large-scale industrialization program of Getulio Vargas and the Nova Republic in the 1930s and 1940s—coupled with the dramatic drop in European immigration—that blacks and mulattoes began to enter the urban proletariat and, later, began to move up the social ladder into the ranks of the middle class.

137Hasenbalg, Race Relations in Modern Brazil, p. 10.

138Degler, Neither Black Nor White, p. 183.

139Fernandes, The Negro in Brazilian Society, p. 189. U0Ibid. p. 265. 79

5.3 Ties to Foreign/Doaestie Elites In the absence of internal political strength, potential challengers and labor groups can rely on their ties to other organizations or elite groups to defend or support their interests. As Bonacich notes: . . . Organization can exist at the level of labor or it can occur at higher levels, for example, in a government that protects them. These levels are generally related in that a strong government can help organize its emigrants.141

In this manner, the "support" of the Italian government for its immigrant population overseas may at first suggest some level of political resources for the colonos in Sao Paulo. But, although "for over thirty years, [Italian] consular personnel and travelers . . . were unanimous in strongly recommending that their compatriots not come to work in the coffee fields of Sao Paulo", it appears there was only a limited amount of interest the Italian government had in tis emigrees.142 This likely had to do with the major "push" factor in Italian immigration near the end of the nineteenth century.143

141Bonacich, "A Theory of Ethnic Antagonism: The Split Labor Market," p. 550.

142Hall in Love, 8ao Paulo in the Brazilian Federation, 1889- 1937, p. 75.

143Michael Hall notes "... it seems evident that the "push" factors were overwhelmingly more important than the "pull" in the Sao Paulo case. The planters were quite fortunate in that their labor crisis coincided with what Gino Luzzato has termed *the most critical years of the Italian economy' . . . Italian sources of the period leave little doubt that those who departed were fleeing an 80 There is no evidence to suggest that alliances between laboring groups and political elites took place during the First Republic. Although there was some preferential hiring and treatment between factory owners and labor of the same ethnicity,144 no systematic link between urban elites and labor groups was ever established.145 Much of this is because such links, during the First Republic, were not necessary part of elite efforts to steer political power toward their interests.

5.4 Accessibility of Political Society The economic policy in Brazil during the First Republic was exceptionally interventionist—beginning with the subsidized immigration program and continuing with other policies supportive of the agricultural sector, such as valorization.146 This interventionism was based upon the centrality of the coffee

increasingly hopeless situation for themselves in Italy" in "Approaches to Immigration History," p. 182-183.

144Cornblit notes a similar pattern of favorable intraethnic treatment between owners and labor in Argentina in "Eurpean Immigrants in Argentine Industry and Politics." The Polities of Conformity in Latin America. ed. Claudio Veliz. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967). Donna Guy has revealed similar patterns of preferential hiring of immigrant women over native women in coastal Argentine industries in her "Women, Peonage, and Industrialization in Argentina, 1810-1914," Latin American Research Review 16:3, p. 65-89.

145Hall, "Immigration and the Early Sao Paulo Working Class," p. 397.

146Andrews, "Black and White Workers: Sao Paulo, Brazil, 1888- 1928," p. 495. Love, Sao Paulo in the Brazilian Federation/ 1889- 1937, p. 45. 81 sector to the state and national economies and the political influence this economic centrality entailed. Out of this political influence, the Republican party was formed and, with little opposition until the 1920s, translated the economic program of the agricultural elite into political reality. During the First Republic, little horizontal or vertical competition was present: industry had yet to become a force central enough to the Brazilian economy to challenge the coffee oligarchy. Outside of the elite class, there was only a small middle strata of urban professionals, and their small size and lack of economic might made them politically ineffectual.147 The immigrant working-class was never a real political or economic threat to elites of either the agricultural or industrial sector- -even considering its escalating strike activity throughout the First Republic. This was as much due to internal divisions and ethnic rivalry as it was to immigrant economism and

individualism—not to mention the state's and elite's willingness to repress strike activity through strikebreakers, police violence and deportations of foreign-born labor leaders.148 Finally, the late arrival and small size of the Afro-Brazilian organizations were two of the major factors that kept them from exercising any influence on Paulista political society in any

147Topik, The Political Economy of the Brazilian State, 1889- 1930, p. 163.

1480ulles, Anarchists and Communists in Brazil, 1900-1935, p. 47-55. Love, Sao Paulo in the Brazilian Federation, 1889-1937, pp. 88, 230. Burns, A History of Brazil, p. 261. 82 measurable way during the First Republic.

5.5 Chapter Summary The relative political capacity Afro-Brazilians and Italian immigrants is illustrated below: Table 7. Comparative Political Capacity of Afro-Bras!liana and Italians in Sao Paulo During the First Republic 1885 1900 1915 1930 organizational level Italians low moderate high high organizational level Afro-Brazilians low low low moderate strength of elite ties Italians low moderate low low strength of elite ties Afro-Brazilians low low low low accessibility of political society 149 low low low low As the chapter discussion and the above chart clearly indicate, significant differences existed between the organizational levels of Italians and Afro-Brazilians. Even with overall "low" rankings in terms of elite ties for both groups, the fact that organization for Italians was primarily in the form of unions suggests that some amount of political leverage might have been at their disposal. Such leverage, for example, could have been implemented to gain competitive advantage versus other labor

"Accessibility of political society" refers to the ability of members of civil society (the general populace) in successfully soliciting their grievances to the state by way of voting, political party formation, etc. 83 groups such as Afro-Brazilians or native, white Brazilians in the workplace. However, unlike the United States and South Africa during similar periods, the accessibiity of political society at both the state and federal level was exceptionally low throughout the First Republic. It can be said that the rigidity and exclusiveness of Sao Paulo's and Brazil's government was such as to effectively curtail most popular challenges to authority and control of public policy. Thus, however much immigrant groups may have wished to preserve their labor spots in the growing Paulista industry, their overall low political capacity would have limited their ability to do so through the state. The same is true for Afro-Brazilians whose location on the economic margins was mirrored by social marginalization and de facto political isolation. 84 Chapter Six: Analysis and Conclusions The current chapter will synthesize the information presented in chapters three, four and five to show when labor conflict between blacks and whites in Brazil was possible and why that conflict did not escalate into racial public policy. Also, the role of capitalists and agricultural elites in the ethnic conflict/racial public policy scenario will be highlighted and compared with that of other countries such as the United States and South Africa. Finally, this chapter will discuss the uniqueness of the Sao Paulo case, explore the possibilities for further application of the split labor market theory to other Brazilian states and put into context the phenomenon of immigration and its effects on race relations.

6.1 Labor Conflict and Political Opportunity Two moments stand out in terms of potential conflict between black and white labor during the First Republic. These moments are: 1) the initial introduction of immigrant labor to the rural sector in the late nineteenth century and, 2) the shift away from unionized immigrant labor and towards nonunionized native labor in the 1920s. These moments also characterize the greatest difference in price of labor between blacks and immigrants during the First Republic—with blacks in the position of higher-priced labor in the first instance, and immigrants as higher-priced in the second. This is illustrated in the chart below: 85

Table 8. Graph of th« Price of Labor for Afro-Brasilians and Italians in Sao Paulo During the First Republic150

coded 10 i i price a a a of i labor

1885 1900 1915 1930 a= Afro-Brazilian i= Italian immigrant

According to the split labor market theory, both instances involve the greatest threat to higher-priced labor and would logically provoke some attempt by higher-priced labor to maintain its position vis-a-vis potentially undercutting labor. In the case of the immediate post-emancipation period, there was no organizational basis around which libertos could rally to protest the introduction of mass immigration of European peasant labor. Even with some organization—fraternal or church-based, for example, it is extremely doubtful that the planter elite would have responded to the pleas of only-recently freed slaves who formed no strategic constituency within the coffee oligarchy.

The "coded price of labor" is based on a point scale in which a "low" ranking equals one, "moderate" equals two, and "high" equals three. "Low", "moderate" and "high" are approximations based on each labor group's permanancy, information and level of living. The numbers are added and the sums used to determine the "coded price of labor." 86 With regard to the later period of the 1920s, the period in which unionized immigrants were the well-established higher-priced labor force, a similar outcome is all that could be expected. Rhetoric of protest against undercutting and strikebreaking notwithstanding, immigrant unions—by far the largest and most widespread of industrial unions—never attempted to exclude blacks (or native Brazilians) from employment in the urban sector. Several explanations potentially account for this, including the state philosophy of a racial democracy that would have made an explicit appeal for segregation widely unpopular, the influence of anarchist and Communist thought on labor unions of the period, and the limited scope and "economism" of many rank and file union members. But it remains clear that whatever strength Paulista unions had was held in check by their lack of ties to political elites and the willingness of the federal and state governments to repress organized labor activity through violence, legislation or deportations of labor leaders. Finally, one important point with regard to competition between labor groups is that often the fear of impending competition is as significant as real competition. This is an important consideration for the Sao Paulo case especially—where the appearance of two labor groups with different wage agendas (as in the case of blacks and Italian immigrants in the rural sector of the late nineteenth century) may suggest that no fear of competition exists. As Bonacich writes: The importance of potential competition cannot be overstressed. Oftentimes writers assert 87 the irrationality of ethnic antagonism when direct economic competition is not yet in evidence owning to few competitors having entered the labor market, or to competitors having concentrated in a few industries . . . [i]t does not take direct competition for members of a higher priced labor group to see the possible threat to their well-being, and to try to prevent its materializing.151 This is equally applicable to the second instance mentioned above; however, "apparent" the threat of black and native Brazilians might have actually been to immigrant labor, the potential for reaction on the part of higher priced labor cannot be dismissed out of hand.

6.2 Role pf the Capitalist/Agricultural Elite Economic elites in a wage economy will attempt to secure the lowest priced labor force possible. Although this is at first glance merely a restatement of one of the basic tenets of the split labor market theory, the Brazilian model—along with the examples of the United States and South Africa—shows that this tenet bears amending. Economic elites do not necessarily maintain a strict laissez-faire attitude vis-a-vis labor, as Bonacich suggests.152

In fact, such elites will push for legislation—as in the United States and South Africa—specifically intended to fix a permanently low-priced labor force. As this discussion shows, the entire subsidized immigration program of Paulista elites was a successful

151Bonacich, "A Theory of Ethnic Antagonism: The Split Labor Market," p. 553-554.

152Ibid. p. 553. 88 attempt to stack the odds in favor of employers by flooding the labor market with peasant labor. Ironically, it is often after stacking the odds through exclusionary legislation (such as the Black Codes in the United States) or special programs (such as subsidized immigration), that economic elites suddenly become laissez-faire liberals with regard to economic policy and fight (further) attempts by other groups to "tamper" with the marketplace. This was the case in both the American southern elites' concern and fear with the labor reform movement of lower-class whites and Jim Crow laws, and the exceptionally harsh repression of the Rand rebellion in South

Africa.153 In Brazil, however, the lack of vertical conflict contributed to constant intervention on the part of elites attempting to tailor-make the Brazilian economy to their particular interests. Such was clearly the case with subsidized immigration, as well as with the coffee subsidies known as valorization and other special programmes of the agriculturally-dominated First Republic.

Of the American South, Wilson writes: "The real concern of the business elite in the decade or two following Reconstruction was the threat to its political and economic power by the rise of the agrarian and labor reform movements. It is ironic but not surprising that both the business elite and the black minority were fearful of the rise in white lower-class power ... As long as the alliance between blacks and the conservative economic elite existed, the latter frequently denounced Jim Crow laws in aristocratic, paternalistic tones as Unnecessary and uncalled for' in The Declining Significance of Race, 2nd. ed., p. 57-58. 89 6.3 Uniqueness of Sao Paulo ease As mentioned earlier, Sao Paulo is unique from many other Brazilian states in a variety of ways. In this, generalizing conclusions based on the Sao Paulo model to other states and regions in Brazil is problematic. For one, Sao Paulo was one of the wealthiest states in the Brazilian federation during the First Republic—so much so that it was the only state able to afford to subsidize immigrants from Europe while other states were forced to rely on in-state labor or migrants from other regions of Brazil.154 This wealth, in turn, resulted in a great deal of political power (as discussed in chapter five) which allowed the state of Sao Paulo to curb economic ventures in its favor and to resist popular challenges that were without elite support from some faction of the Paulista oligarchy or military. But, from the viewpoint of race relations, it is the phenomenon of immigration that clearly makes Sao Paulo unique—however much the impact of immigration has been ignored or misread by earlier commentators. Immigration inhibited the ability of freed slaves to bargain for wages and working conditions in the nascent wage economy of Brazil and, later in the urban sector, allowed employers to continue to exploit the female and child labor of immigrant workers up until the strikes of 1919. While it may be true that immigration "had a major role in . . . the abolition of slavery . . . urbanization (and) industrialization*', it is also true that its social effects on both

154Andrews, "Black and White Workers: Sao Paulo, Brazil, 1888- 1928," p. 508. 90 the Afro-Brazilian and native Brazilian population were disasterous.155 For evidence of this, it would be worthwhile to consider the long-term effects of immigration on black socio­ economic life in Sao Paulo by comparing black median income/state growth, black infant mortality/statewide infant mortality and other ratios with those of neighboring states such as Minas Gerais or Rio de Janeiro. Although Fernandes, for one, has claimed that "immigration did not contribute to changing immediately, or on a long-term basis, the structure of pre-existing race relations . . ." ,156 it is clear that—in the absence of racial public policies or some other form of widespread, systematic ethnic discrimination- -the socio-economic dislocation that kept the vast majority of Afro-Brazilians out of the wage economy for over forty years after emancipation has at its root the mass immigration of Europeans during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

6.4 Conclusions

At the onset of this discussion, a link was suggested between the presence or absence of racism and the existence of racial public policies. This link has been borne out by examples in the United States and South Africa. While this study does not deny this link, it does question the use of racial public policies as a measure of racism in a given society. Although no such public

155Hall, "Approaches to Immigration History," p. 177.

156Fernandes, "Immigration and Race Relations in Sao Paulo," p. 136. 91 policies developed in Brazil, scholars and observers have revealed a significant amount of racial prejudice and stereotyping between white, black and mulatto Brazilians.157 This, coupled with the disproportionate number of black Brazilians in the lower and underclasses, is fairly convincing evidence that discrimination on the basis of race does occur in Brazil. One possible conclusion is that racial public policies are, in their inception, more linked to class than race. Even in the examples of the virulent anti-black public policies of the U.S. and South Africa, this conclusion is logical. If greater class (or sub-class) differences in terms of price of labor and political resources exist between competing labor groups, then it may be asserted that any exclusionary public policy will be more severe than if the differences between the sub-classes were less. A comparison of the United States and South Africa (see Table 1. "Split Labor Comparisons: United States, South Africa and Brazil"

p. 22-3) suggests that this is the case, given the relatively higher severity of South African apartheid compared to American Jim Crow. However, the Brazilian model shows a difference between sub­ classes of blacks and Italian immigrants that is proportionate at least to that of the United States during the mid- and late nineteenth century (see Table 6. "Ethnicity and the Price of Labor

157Roger Bastide and Pierre van den Berghe. "Stereotypes, Norms and Interracial Behavior in Sao Paulo, Brazil," American Sociological Review XXII. (December 1957): 689-694. See also the earlier discussion, "Theories of Brazilian Race Relations" in chapter one. 92 in Sao Paulo During the First Republic"). Yet no racial public policies developed in Brazil. Thus, while class or sub-class conflict is a major factor in the development of racial public policies, it is not the determining one. Such conflict provides the context for exclusionary public policies but will not, in itself, bring such policies about. Racial public policies are foremost the execution of political will of the strongest political organization: be that organization a political party, a union or similar labor movement or an entrenched political elite. This is true for all of the three countries mentioned here. The severity and type (caste, exclusion or a combination of both) are determined by the goals of that group or organization that is able to safeguard its political and/or socio-economic interests through government legislation—or by the lack of it. As has been suggested, the supersaturation of the labor market by Paulista agricultural elites provided a labor force that was cheaper than Brazilian nationals and libertos. The supersaturation then maintained a "reserve army of the unemployed" which guaranteed the availability of lower-priced workers—be they black or white,• foreign• or national.• 15B It is political organization that explains why both racial discrimination and ethnically-defined labor group conflict could be present in Sao Paulo without the development of exclusionary public policies based on race.

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